Day 153, Chandigarh, Punjab [Saturday 3rd May 2008]
Previous day: Day 152, Bikaner, Rajasthan [Friday 2nd May 2008]
Next day: Day 154, Chandigarh [Sunday 4th May 2008]
(photo by Harinder Pal Singh)We arrive in Chandigarh around 6am. Tonight we're going to watch the IPL cricket match in nearby Mohali. It's a Bollywood blockbuster, with the owners of both teams coming from the Hindi film industry. Shahrukh Khan's Kolkata Knight Riders take on Preity Zinta's King's XI Punjab. But we haven't got our tickets yet. I ordered them online way back in Lucknow and asked for them to be delivered to the Lake Palace, Udaipur — the only place I knew we had dates booked. Unfortunately the tickets didn't arrive until after we'd checked out, but I asked the staff there to forward them on to the Taj in Chandigarh if they turned up.
So, today we need to find out if we can collect them. A further problem is that we haven't booked a hotel here in advance. And in a cricket mad country, in a city which is hosting a big sold-out headline match of the first T20 tournament, that was a bad idea. Everywhere is full. We try every hotel listed in our Lonely Plant guide. We walk around the Sector we're in — more of which later — speculatively trying hotels. We get the phonebook and go down the list of hotels in Chandigarh. Eventually, after trying maybe a dozen, we find somewhere with a vacancy. It's a long way out from the city centre, in Sector 35, but we book the room anyway. Then, as we're walking down the road to catch a rickshaw we notice a tiny doorway with a sign above — Multitech Hotel — which we must have missed before. We go inside. It has a bad name, but nice, clean rooms, and one is available. The manager informs us of the price several times more than necessary, and after cleaning up we go for breakfast.
(photo by Daveybot) So, Chandigarh. It's a refreshing change from the congested, noisy, dirty, polluted cities and towns elsewhere in India. Here it feels clean, and green. There are trees everywhere! Lining the roads, in the central reservation — the roads have a central reservation! — on the roundabouts. It's a very large city, not population-wise, but in terms of layout. It was built for the motor car Transport is efficient and fast moving — cars, rickshaws and buses stream down the wide avenues, which stretch straight for miles. It's quite shocking to be able to see where you're going for so far.
(photo by d ha rm e sh) Standing in the pedestrian plaza in the centre of Sector 17 is a thought provoking experience. The nomenclature of the Le Corbusier designed city suggests a science fiction, Logan's Run-esque future dystopia. Names like Sector 22 and The Capital Complex have an eerie modernity. But the ageing low-rise concrete blocks with shop fronts at ground level, surrounding acres of undistinguished, flat concrete slab paving, place you firmly in the worst kind of drab, disregarded council estate shopping precinct of late 20th century Britain. Add to this the mix of Indian shops and Western brands (Esprit, Lee, Pepe Jeans, Wrangler, Nike and Adidas all have shops here) and the scorching sun and you can understand why it's such a weird place to be.
We get on the Chandigarh tourist bus, which for Rs. 50 will show us all the sights except the ones we really wanted to see. So we drive to the Rose Garden (we get 10 minutes here before being herded back onto the bus), Bougainvillea Garden (15 minutes), Art Gallery (30 minutes), Rock Garden (45 minutes — and that's 44 minutes too long, spend wandering around artlessly modelled piles of recycled junk; although the fact that a folly as whimsical and pointless as this could ever exist in India is worth at least one small 'hurrah!') and the artificial lake (45 minutes). We don't get to see the famous 'open hand' sculpture — the symbol of the city – or the High Court or the Assembly.
I buy some jeans, as walking around a fairly cosmopolitan city in tatty shorts is starting to annoy me. Kate makes us get a rickshaw for miles so she can have a McDonalds, as following her recent sickness she says she can't face eating Indian food for the forseeable future.
At 6pm we get a taxi to Mohali stadium. As we arrive there are already big crowds in the streets and lots of traffic. We get given a pair of '4' and '6' signs on the way in. The floodlights are on, the crowd is cheering as the players warm up and it seems to be a really good atmosphere. When the cheerleaders come out the crowd noise doubles. In our section, for which we paid Rs. 750 for VIP tickets, there are lots of families, women and girls - a good sign.
In the first few overs a fight breaks out a few rows behind us. The police stand on the edge of the pitch with their lathis (sticks) behind their backs. They appear to have neither the training, competance nor inclination to do anything about the disturbance. Eventually one approaches the brawling, bloodied men and, astonishingly, directs them to move to the back of the terrace! There, inevitably, they continue fighting, eventually drawing the attention of the entire section of endemically distractable Indians. The crowd all around us is now facing away from the pitch towards the fight at the back of the stand. After some time they tire, and there are calls for the front rows to sit down so that others can see. They do so, until the fight breaks out again and the whole cycle is repeated.
About 45 minutes into the match a huge crowd surges through the gates and takes up all the available room in our section. People crowd into the aisles and squeeze in between each row. People clamber onto seats vacated by other people who stood up so they could see the game because of the extra crowds. We find out later that the organisers had made a special offer to stimulate ticket sales — buy one ticket and get one free. But obviously having failed to understand the mechanics of such an offer, they didn't sell only two thirds of the tickets and allow the one third of free ones to fill the stadium to capacity. No, they greedily sold all the tickets and squeezed in 50% more people than there are seats. The stadium is now uncomfortably full, probably dangerously so. It's an irresponsible and maybe unwise decision — the families all around us, with their children, are this club's future market, but we see many of them leaving, upset.
As a result of the overcrowding, and the typically volatile Indian crowd, we decide to leave at half time. King's XI had made 177-8, not a bad total after losing a couple of early wickets. I buy a souvenir t-shirt which looks like it was knocked up on the pavement using a coal-powered iron-on transfer sticker. We get a rickshaw back to the hotel in Chandigarh and watch the rest of the match on the TV — King's XI win! Sreesanth takes 2 wickets in the first over.
Next day: Day 154, Chandigarh [Sunday 4th May 2008]
Previous day: Day 152, Bikaner, Rajasthan [Friday 2nd May 2008]